Legend Of The Highland Dragon (23 page)

Good news was never urgent business. Good news never came after midnight.

At first Mina wanted to faint, or to burst into tears and scream at the universe:
Go
away
and
leave
me
alone! I’m
too tired! Haven’t you done enough?
But the universe rarely listened, and she couldn’t do anything if she fainted.

“Should we come?” Stephen asked. “I’ve no notion what it’s about, but if you’d rather be alone—”

“No,” said Mina.

Stephen took her hand. He’d taken off his gloves, and the warm pressure of his fingers against hers took her further back from the edge of hysteria. She didn’t cling to him as they made their way to the parlor, but she squeezed his hand tightly when Professor Carter stood to greet them.

“You might as well come out with it, sir,” she said, before the professor could begin. “Breaking things gently never works with me.”

Mina expected the news to be about her family. What else did she have? What else that would concern her and not Stephen or Colin? None of the friends from her boardinghouse would have sent a message so late or in the person of Professor Carter, no matter how severe their problems.

So Professor Carter said, “It’s your sister,” and it wasn’t really a surprise, not a surprise at all, but still it hit Mina like a blow to the stomach. All the breath went out of her in a small cry.

“Which one?” she asked in a voice that might have been recorded. She half expected to hear the scratch and hiss of a gramophone as she went on. “What happened?”

“Your younger sister. Er.” Professor Carter pulled awkwardly at his beard, searching his memory. “Flora. Florence.”

“Florrie,” said Mina. Florence was her name, but nobody called her that. It had always been too long and too formal for her. There was a chair nearby. Mina fumbled her way into it, and Stephen knelt at her side, taking both her hands in his. The two other men—and Mrs. Baldwin—had to notice, but Mina didn’t give a damn just then. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s ill,” said the professor, “and I’m afraid it looks to be quite serious, though nobody’s really certain quite what’s wrong. She, ah, she lost consciousness this evening, and she hadn’t regained it when your brother came to find me. I’m terribly sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry
for
,” said Mina, finding and seizing a core of ferocity beneath the numbness of her shock. She sat up straighter in the chair. “Not yet. Have they had a doctor in? When did Bert find you? Where is he?”

“He came to my office about eight this evening. He said your father had gone for a doctor, but that your mother had sent him to find you at the same time, so he couldn’t tell me the results. He did tell me to add that he’d already spoken to—Alice?—and that she was on her way home. And I sent him back, of course,” Professor Carter added, shaking his head at the folly of the world. “A child his age on the streets after dark? I put him into a cab myself.”

“That’s very generous of you,” said Mina, and wanted to smile and cry at the same time. Riding in a carriage would have been the thrill of Bert’s life at any other time, thrill enough even to overcome his wounded pride at being thought a child or having his ease with the London streets called into question. Tonight, she thought he might hardly have noticed. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, girl. The price of a cab ride won’t beggar me any time soon.”

“Oh. Well—thank you.”

She stood up, preparing to spring into action, and then had no idea where to spring
to
.

For a brief and stomach-clenching moment, she thought that maybe the harshest of the preachers from her childhood had been right, that Florrie’s sickness was a judgment on her for—what? Pride? Magic? Fornication?

No. Even if what she’d done was wrong—even if plenty of people didn’t do worse without consequence—no god worth the name would make a child pay for it. Besides, illness happened often enough without divine intervention. Children in the East End got sick all the time.

Children in the East End died of those illnesses all the time.

When Mina had gotten to her feet, the men had too. Now, when she turned to Stephen, she had to look up to meet his eyes. “I—”

“Colin,” he said, looking past her, “order a carriage for Miss Seymour. The fastest you can get. Have Polly pack her things. Quickly, too. I want her bags by the front door in five minutes. I assume you’ve nothing breakable,” he added to Mina.

“No,” she said, dizzied for a second. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not what we agreed. And I know there’ll be trouble with the wards.”

“Damn what we agreed. And damn the wards, too. The new moon’s safely past, and there’s Colin and myself to guard the place. Here.” He drew out his new wallet and removed a sheaf of banknotes. “Take this. Get your sister whatever she needs—medicine, food, a private room at St. Mary’s if it comes to that. If you need more, send someone here to tell me. If I can do anything, tell me. We don’t know much healing, I’m afraid. We’ve never really had to learn.”

The notes swam before Mina’s eyes: a rainbow of colors, the Queen’s eyes, and numbers that made no sense to her just now. It was far more than the cost of a carriage ride, though. She put the money into her coat pocket. “Thank you,” she said. “I—I’ll pay you back, if it’s more than—”

Out of nowhere, heedless of Professor Carter’s startled and disapproving
harrumph
in the background, Stephen was grasping her shoulders, his hands painfully tight. His eyes blazed like a sunset. “Anything I have is yours, Mina.
Anything
. Whenever you want it.”

“The sentiment’s pretty enough,” said Colin from the doorway, “and I don’t doubt you mean it. But perhaps further elaboration could wait for another time. Miss Seymour’s bags are ready, and there’ll be a cab pulling up momentarily.”

“I’ve got to go,” said Mina, stepping away reluctantly: reluctant because of both what awaited her and who she was leaving. “I’ll come back, if—when—” Her throat caught. Her mind caught too, fearing to tempt fate by either too much confidence or not enough. “I’ll come back when I can.”

“I
could
go as well,” Stephen began.

“No, you couldn’t.” Colin’s voice was calm and cold, even if there was more than a touch of sympathy in it. “You can’t do a damn thing there, and you have problems of your own here. People you’re responsible for too, Lord MacAlasdair.”

“He’s right,” said Mina, and managed a smile. “Thank you. For everything.”

Stephen wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, not for very long but forcefully enough to leave her breathless, her lips tingling. “Come back to me,” he said, when he finally let her go.

“Of course,” said Mina, and fled into the hall.

***

A short time later, though it felt like years had passed, she stood in a dark room and watched her sister. Florrie slept on her side as she always had. At first glance, she looked healthy enough, at least in the dark. Only by looking closely did Mina see the way her hair was plastered to her face with sweat. Only by watching for several minutes did she see how shallow Florrie’s breathing was and hear how she wheezed with each inhalation.

Mina closed her eyes. Almost immediately, she made herself open them again. She couldn’t hide from Florrie’s illness, and she shouldn’t if she could have.

“It’ll be all right,” Alice whispered at her side. “We’ve all been sick a few times, haven’t we?” But her voice lacked confidence, and the basin of water she carried shook a little. She swallowed and pitched her voice a little higher, toward the figure who sat at Florrie’s side. “Mum, Mina’s here.”

Mrs. Seymour looked up slowly. She stood, wrung out a damp cloth for the final time, and then picked it and the bowl up before she came over to the door. Encumbered as she was, she couldn’t embrace Mina, but she gave her a one-handed squeeze with what must have been the last of her strength. She looked exhausted.

She apparently wasn’t the only one. “You look all in,” she said to Mina. “I told your father it wasn’t so bad, but—”

“Doesn’t matter. I’d want to be here.”

“Both of you go downstairs,” said Alice. “And then to bed. I’ll sit up with Florrie, and Dad’s said he’ll take over when I’m knackered.”

“But I—” Mina began.

“Go
on
, dolt. You’ll make yourself useful before long. We all will. And you’ll both be more useful with sleep.”

“She sounds like you,” said Mina, reaching out to take the bowl from her mother as she went downstairs.

“Funny,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I was going to say she sounded like your Aunt Jane.”

It was good to laugh with family again, but the moment didn’t last long. It couldn’t.

“Professor Carter said she fainted this evening,” said Mina, as they reached the kitchen. Mrs. Seymour began to fill the kettle. Falling into old patterns, Mina emptied the bowl into the sink and started getting the tea things ready.

“She did. After supper. We thought it was nothing at first. A bit of a cold, maybe, or—well, I thought it might be female troubles, though she’s young for that. But we couldn’t wake her, and then the fever started.” Mrs. Seymour wiped at a nonexistent spot on the stove, keeping her face turned away.

Putting down the teacups, Mina hugged her mother from behind. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“What could you have done?” Mrs. Seymour asked sharply, but she patted Mina’s hand.

“Been here,” said Mina. “Has the doctor been?”

“Oh, yes. The lady doctor I wrote you about. She said to try and keep the fever down, and to give her tea and broth and similar when she wakes. She can’t say what it is, though,” Mrs. Seymour added.

“Just a fever, maybe. That happens,” said Mina, trying not to think of stories she’d read in the
Times
or heard at Professor Carter’s. Steamships came in every day from all around the world. Along with passengers and official cargo, might they bring diseases? Maybe even one that a London doctor hadn’t ever seen?

Maybe she should stop borrowing trouble.

Mina let go of her mother and went to get the canister of tea.

“She’ll be here again tomorrow,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I’m sure—she seems very bright.”

“And if she can’t do anything,” Mina said, glancing for the first time toward the hallway where she’d hung her coat, “we’ll find someone who can.”

“I’m not sure why you feel this need for urgency,” Colin said.

He lounged at the library desk, occupying the seat that Mina had taken for weeks. He sat far more casually than she ever had, though, with his feet crossed on the desk and the chair tilted back, not at all worried about damaging either the wood or his spine.

He’d never needed to worry about such things. The MacAlasdair wealth was more than sufficient to replace a chair or a desk, and the backbone of a dragon scion could stand up to a kick from a horse, let alone bad posture. Stephen had never even been conscious of either for most of his life.

Of course he thought of Mina. Everything in the damn house reminded him of her.

“The arm will be better in a few weeks,” Colin added in the face of Stephen’s silence, glancing derisively down at his sling. “It’s mending now. Ward’s hated you for a lifetime, and he’s been trying to kill you for months. What’s another fortnight or two?”

“I didn’t know what he was doing before,” said Stephen, pouring powder into the barrel of a derringer. Most of the time, he didn’t bother with guns. Baldwin had owned the only revolver in the house, and Mina had taken that with her to Ward’s office and then her home. This older gun, one of the relics of his father’s time in London, would at least give him two shots at Ward, assuming that it didn’t explode in his face. He would rather not change shape unless he had to, at least not until Ward was dead. “We killed one of his half men. I don’t want to give him time to make another one.”

“Maybe he already has,” said Colin. “You don’t send all your forces on a raid. Even I know that. Maybe he has a small army.”

“Then I still don’t want to give him time to make another one. He uses people for these creatures he makes, Colin.”

“Yes,” said Colin, “very bad form. Not worth getting killed over.”

“I’m not planning to be killed.”

Colin snorted. “Trust you to think people plan to get killed.”

Powder, charges, cap: Stephen double-checked the gun and put it down. “Colin,” he said, “he’s doing this because of me.”

“No, he’s—” The brothers locked eyes. Colin sighed. “Fine. I’ll not waste my breath. But I’m coming with you.”

“You’re hurt—”

“And still sturdier than Miss Seymour was last night. You’re not investigating now; you’re going into battle. I can cast spells one-handed, and a cast makes a fair bludgeon
in
extremis
. I’m coming with you.”

Argument would be futile. Stephen knew that from Colin’s voice, even though his brother’s posture was as casual as ever. “Then there’s nothing more for me to say. At least Judith’s still at home, if things go very badly.”

“I thought you weren’t planning to get killed.”

“And I thought people don’t generally plan on that.”

Colin shook his head. “You’re a right nuisance when you’re melancholy, you know that?”

“I’m not melancholy.”

“You’d think a MacAlasdair would be a better liar. At least you’ve slept. You have slept, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Stephen. He had, in fact. A long life had taught him how to keep his emotions from getting in the way of his body’s most basic requirements. The night had been dark and peaceful. He’d only begun to worry when he woke up.

Undeterred, Colin eyed him. “She’s been gone a day, you great idiot. The wards can’t be causing all of this mood. Are you going to become one of those nauseating sorts who has to have his lady in sight at all times?”

“I will not, and she’s not my lady yet,” Stephen said, though speaking the words did lighten his mood a bit, foolishly enough. “And I wouldn’t be worried if this were an ordinary sort of absence or at a better time.”

“This
is
an ordinary sort of absence. Oh, it’s distressing now and all that”—Colin waved a hand—“but human children get ill. They’re known for it. They recover, generally, and Lord knows you gave her money enough to buy half the doctors in the East End if she feels it needful.”

“And if Mina gets ill?”

“Then you’ll put her in a bed upstairs and bring in half the doctors in
London
, I don’t doubt. I’ll even go after that bloke in Yorkshire with the familiar spirit if we need more than that, or we’ll bring her up to Brigid’s Well in Ireland. But things won’t come to any such pass. She’s a grown woman, and a healthy, strapping sort of girl at that.”

“Thank you for noticing,” said Stephen, only half sarcastic.

“I said I wasn’t in love with the girl, not that I didn’t look. She’ll be back. She’ll be
fine
. Now cheer up before I hit you with a bookend.”

***

“Well,” said Dr. Stevens, straightening up, “her condition hasn’t gotten any worse.”

“But no better?” Mrs. Seymour asked.

Dr. Stevens shook her head. The lady doctor of song and story, or at least of letter and mild dinner-table controversy, was surprisingly young, with only a touch of gray in her brown hair. She was gaunt, too—in Mina’s experience, half the educated people in the world forgot to eat if left to their own devices, and the other half ate too much—and her face was sharp, softened now by a look of confusion and regret.

“It’s actually rather remarkable,” she said, “how little she’s changed. I’d have expected—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the time or the place to wax academic.”

Mrs. Seymour didn’t care, Mina knew. She probably didn’t even hear most of what Dr. Stevens said because her attention was fixed on a single point. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

“A fever,” said the doctor, and spread her hands. “Some sort of influenza, perhaps. None of you have been feeling sick at all?”

“Not a one of us. Nor any of the neighbors.”

“Let’s hope you all stay as healthy, then.” Dr. Stevens frowned down at Florrie’s unconscious body. “All I can say is that you should keep going as you were. If you’d like to bring in another doctor, though, that’s quite reasonable. If she doesn’t regain consciousness by the time I come by this evening, I’ll send for one myself.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Seymour, and turned with set face and thin lips to her youngest daughter.

Watching, Mina blinked hard to keep tears firmly behind her eyelids. She looked away, toward Dr. Stevens’s retreating form. The doctor was glancing back over her shoulder, regarding the scene with puzzled worry.

Mina followed her out, stopping her on the landing. “Wax academic now,” she said, too weary and scared for preambles. “I’d like to know.”

“Oh?” Dr. Stevens peered up at her, surprised, but then shrugged. “It’s simply odd. With most disease, there’s some change from day to day, even if it’s not significant. Patients get better or worse by tiny degrees. Sometimes they get a little better and then worse again, or vice versa. And I suppose that could have happened while I was gone, but—”

“But?”

“But your sister’s condition, as far as I can tell, is exactly the same as it was yesterday. It’s not the oddest incident in the medical books, but it does rather stand out. And she hasn’t woken up at all, which isn’t common with fevers. I’d have expected at least one of you to be sick as well. It’s all very strange.”

“Oh,” said Mina. “I see. Thank you.”

She watched the doctor leave. She stood very still; there was earthquake enough in her mind without adding physical motion to it.

Nobody else was at all ill. Dr. Stevens didn’t know what was wrong. Except for the fever, Florrie was asleep, sleeping like a princess who’d pricked her finger or bitten into a poisoned apple. Sleeping like the target of a wicked fairy’s vengeance.

He
wasn’t a man to bear well with being thwarted
Stephen said in her memory, and she saw again the newspaper article:
East
End
Slaughter
.

Servants gossiped, and Mina had read letters in the kitchen. It would be easy enough to find out where she lived and who her family was, especially for a man who could throw money around. Illness wasn’t as quick or—please, God—as irreparable as the thieves’ deaths had been, but it got her away from Stephen and it probably made for very satisfying revenge.

“Oh, God,” said Mina, except she didn’t really say it. Her lips shaped the words, but no air went past them. For one thing, she didn’t want to alarm the household. For another, her lungs didn’t feel like they contained any such thing as air.

She could be wrong. Asking if Florrie had touched anything or eaten anything unusual would be pointless. Children here were all on their own often enough, walking to school or running wild with friends. Even if Ward couldn’t curse from a distance, there were a thousand opportunities for a poisoned apple or a stealthy pinprick when nobody was looking. Mina was no detective, and there was little time.

She stepped up to the sickroom doorway again. “Mum,” she said, trying to sound calm, “I’m going out for a bit. I think I might know someone who can help. Maybe.”

“This man you’ve been working for?” Despite her fatigue, Mrs. Seymour’s eyes were sharp and knowing. “If you think there’s a chance—”

“Maybe,” Mina said again.

“You could send Bert.”

“No.” If she’d thought they’d understand, she’d have told everyone in her family to stay in the house and bar the doors. She wasn’t sure if even staying inside would help—but thresholds were supposed to offer some protection, and any direct housebreaking would make the neighbors notice and raise hell. “He’ll see me quicker.”

Not stopping to get drawn into further conversation—even further
thought
seemed perilous just then—Mina went to her room. Alice was asleep, and that was just as well. It spared Mina questions about why she was putting her coat on, and it spared her a great deal of discussion when she took the revolver out from under her pillow and slipped it into her coat pocket.

***

Fog filled the street outside, thick and yellow and choking, heavy with the smell of sulfur. Such fogs were nothing new—Mina had grown up with them every few days of her life—but now, with Florrie lying ill behind her and six weeks’ worth of magic and strangeness in her consciousness, everything seemed more sinister, and the fog was no exception. She thought of Hell, shuddered, and walked faster.

Then there were three figures in front of her.

She had no sense of their approach. Part of that was the fog, but not all. They moved too quickly and too fluidly to be people. She thought that they’d stepped out from the shadows under a nearby building, but there was more than one way to come out of shadows.

Mina stepped back and tried to bolt left. One of the shapes darted in front of her and grabbed her wrist with a gloved hand. As she screamed, it dragged her forward, and she could see that it
was
a shape, not a man. It wasn’t entirely a manes either. She wished it had been.

It was both. Bits of human features floated in shadow: one eye, a nose, a lower lip that stretched into raw meat before the shadow cut it off, and patches of yellow teeth. The hand on her arm was boneless and cold—not as numbingly cold as the touch of the pure manes had been, but with a crushing strength that made up for that lack.

“Come with us,” said the thing, its half mouth squirming around the words. “Come quietly.”

Mina yanked the revolver out of her pocket with her free hand and fired at the half man’s face, pulling the trigger over and over again. She realized that she was still screaming. She screamed louder when the bullets hit, when flesh and shadow tore away from the creature’s head and fell to the ground, and yet it kept standing, kept pulling her toward it. Its eye was gray-white, filmy.

Someone was shouting in the background. Footsteps rushed toward them.

The things looked at each other. Then the creature holding Mina said a word she couldn’t recognize, and everything went dark.